Lemon drizzle gin cakes

Excuse my appalling icing attempts in this post, I’ve always been utterly shit at icing, one day I’ll actually learn how to do it but until then you’ll just have to try look beyond the disastrous attempts at prettying cakes and bear with me

Gin and lemon, two happy bedfellows that sing about sunnier times and come as welcome relief in these cold winter days. These cakes are light and fluffy yet boozy and indulgent, what’s not to love?

You can hear me making these cakes by clicking here (you’ll need Iplayer as it’s a BBC clip). There’s no bad language so it’s perfectly safe to listen to in the kitchen whilst whipping up a batch of these tasty treats with the kids around.

Lemon drizzle gin cakes:

Ingredients:

For the cake mixture:

200g Stork
200g caster sugar
200g self raising flour
3 large eggs
zest of 3 lemons
90ml Sipsmith Lemon Drizzle Gin (or you could use a citrusy gin)

For the drizzle:

juice of 3 lemons
160g caster sugar
50ml Sipsmith Lemon Drizzle Gin
3 juniper berries

For the icing:

1 x 500g tub ready made lemon frosting (yeah I totally cheated and got one from Morrisons)
Edible decorations such as fondant flowers and white chocolate stars.

Method:

Heat oven to 170C (fan). Place 12 cupcake cases into a muffin tray
Use an electric whisk to cream together the Stork and the sugar until it’s light and fluffy.
Add flour, eggs and zest and beat together.
Gradually beat in the gin.
Fill the cases around two thirds full, use all the mixture
Bake for 12 minutes or until the cakes pass the skewer test.
Make the drizzle by combining the ingredients in a pan, heat over a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved, bring to the boil and boil for 30 seconds them carefully remove the juniper berries.
Prick the cakes all over the top with a pointed chopstick or skewer then carefully pour all of the syrup over them, leave to cool completely.
Put the frosting in a piping bag, pipe all over the tops of the cakes (try and do a much better job that I did!) then decorate as you please.